The "I am currently reading" thread

[Guest]

A Warning by Anonymous.  Nothing new about the fetid malignant narcissist, with added Republican finger-wagging.  Read Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward instead for a similar perspective (though there's a lot of Bannon), or Russian Roulette by David Corn and Michael Isikoff if you want the Russia story (and Collusion by Luke Harding).   Just started Crime in Progress: The Secret History of the Trump-Russia Investigation by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.  Looking forward to seeing who gets the definitive Ukraine account.

 

Also Hall of Mirrors by Christopher Fowler,  and The Black Tower by PD James.

[metalman 21]

A. Fielding - Murder at The Nook (1930s detective story by an author who was one of the stalwarts of the Collins Crime Club list at the time but has now vanished into obscurity so completely that nobody knows who he (or she) was. Not bad this one, quite Freeman Wills Crofts-like in some ways.

A. Fielding - The Upfold Farm mystery. Another one, but not so successful and the writing style seems so different it could almost have been written by a different person. 

Robert B. Parker - Now and then. A typical Spenser novel but as usual very readable.

 

Now I'm half way through Raymond Postgate's Somebody at the Door, recently reprinted in the British Library crime classics series, and enjoying it a lot.

Edited December 5, 2019 by metalman

[feargal 21]

Just finished The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, sequel to The Handmaid's Tale.  Very good! 

[Funky_Gibbon 42]

Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton, book 2 of the Salvation Sequence.

 

The first book in this series, Salvation, was a bit experimental by PFH standards in that he cast aside his usual epic scale storytelling from a hundred viewpoints and instead reduced it to a stories of about half a dozen people travelling together in a vehicle to investigate the remains of an crashed alien starship, with each of them having an event from their past told in vignette, almost a collection of only slightly related short stories, as well as one other story that appears almost entirely unrelated to anything else. It was only in the final few chapters that all the threads were drawn together to reveal what the story is about. It was an interesting but not entirely successful change in style IMO.

 

The sequel is more of a return to his roots and is back to the epic scale storytelling and could almost be considered treading over old ground in some ways but he does these kind of stories so wonderfully that I simply don't care. The blood-dimmed tide is well and truly loosed and I can't wait for the final book.

 

 

[Guest]

The Lonely Hour by Christopher Fowler.  It's a tad darker than the previous Bryant & May tales.  And Running Against The Devil by Rick Wilson.  How to prevent Trump grabbing four more years and subsequently establishing a Trumpian dynasty, while hopefully enabling the dems to avoid self immolation by facilitating a Trump victory .

[Pettytom 1]

I’ve just finished “Cruel to be kind” which is Will Birch’s biography of Nick Lowe.

 

It is a compelling book, which tells of Lowe’s genius and his fragility. A must read for any 70’s, or 80’s music fan.

[Rollypolly 51]

I've just finished The Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley. Its the 2nd of the Seven Sisters books. Its a multi layered story, switching from the present day back to 1870s Norway, through WW1 & 2. I'm looking forward to reading The Shadow Sister which is the next book in the series.

[pattricia 574]

The Murders At White House Farm.

[metalman 21]

Just read:   Behind the Yellow Blind by R. A. J. Walling. A curiously structured 1930s detective story that wasn't bad but I felt maybe could have been better.

                         The Caltraps of Time by David I. Masson. SF stories from the 1960s and early 70s, not dated as badly as they might have.

                         Our fathers' lies by Andrew Taylor. A good early effort by an author who's now more famous for his historical mysteries.

                          Death on the boat train by John Rhode. Decent mid-period Rhode, ingenious with some Crofts-like alibi-breaking involved.

 

Now onto: If I were you by P. G. Wodehouse. Can't beat the occasional bit of Wodehouse.

[Cazwaz69 13]

Just read the ashes of London by Andrew Taylor. Brilliant book set at the time of the Fire of London. 

[nikki-red 307]

Perfect Victim

By Carla Norton and Christine McGuire

The bizarre true story of Colleen Stan who was kidnapped at the age of 22 and held captive, tortured and used as a slave for 7 years.

[feargal 21]

Just finished 'Faithful Place' by Tana French.   Detective novel set in Dublin, which was enjoyable for the first three quarters until the story resolved, and the latter quarter was just the hero detective grappling with memories and his conscience in a rather dull fashion.